Immaculate
by Poisoned Scarlet
Summary: It seemed that ever since she left, the gods had been tirelessly laughing at his despair. The letter left behind by her only adds to his grief.


**Disclaimer: **I do not own Attack on Titan.

**Immaculate  
by. **_Poisoned Scarlett_

"Levi?" Hanji hollers, setting a hand on her waist. She is not waving her arms frantically, her glasses glinting under the bright shine of the sun. She is not doing anything: she only stands at the end of the dark hall, her silhouette strong despite the exhaustion drawn on her face. Her hair is kept up in a messy ponytail, greasier than usual. She has bags under her eyes and, as Levi draws closer, he can see a stack of paperwork stuffed under her arm. The names of the deceased, he thinks, the only record that will be left of them in their narrow world. "Do you want to do it?"

"What are you going off about now?"

Hanji half-smiles. "The room has to be vacated for the next recruits. So it's either you or me, Corporal, and I still have to account for some bodies."

Levi ponders it a second and walks past her without another word, only a cool side-glance that speaks louder than any words he could have ever said. Hanji watches him go, dropping her eyes to the ground with a sad smile. His movements are smooth, they're undisturbed, and he collects his cleaning supplies with an air of indifference. But he can feel their sorrowful stares, can hear their whispers, but he does not look. He does not need to look at others to see pain: he sees it every morning in the mirror.

"Corporal," Mike speaks up softly.

Levi looks at him sharply, pausing his folding of his cleaning rag.

Mike parts his lips again but then thinks better of it, shaking his head instead. Levi drops his eyes back down to his hand and continues his task. Levi does not need to say anything to Hanji, to Irvin, to anyone: he knows what he has to do and he will do it; no one else can. He will not allow anyone else to. He will endure it because she was in his squad and she had been chosen out specifically by him for her superior skill.

He had chosen her.

He had decided she was ready.

_He had chosen her._

The door is no different than any of the others: it is muddy brown, worn, the wood splintering from the humidity of the summers and the bitterness of winters. The knob is cold under his hand, brass creaking, and he pushes the door open silently. Her room is tiny, one of the less impressive ones in the castle, and although others would have complained, she had not. She had accepted the room assigned to her with a bright smile, chirping how she hoped her window gave her view of the grassy hills outside. She had always been disgustingly optimistic, Levi thinks as he walks inside and closes the door behind him.

He drops the bucket full of water beside him, pulling the handkerchief down from over his nose. He inhales and it smells of honeysuckle and worn leather, of Petra Ral. His eyes sweep over her perfectly made bed, two books dropped upon it as if in a haste. Her second pair of boots are lined perfectly by the end of her closet, and her closet is neat unlike others he has had the misfortune of seeing. He reaches in and touches the sleeve of one of her shirts, wrinkle-free, soft beneath his fingertips from use. He drops his hand to his side and closes the door, locking away her clothes, her scent, and presses his hand to the door.

He smiles faintly.

There is no dust, there is not a single speck of filth. The room is immaculate.

His smile disappears.

"You took my words too seriously," Levi murmurs to himself. He runs a finger down her desk top. It comes back clean. "I wasn't actually going to search rooms. That's a pain in the ass." He pulls her chair out and sits down, leaning back and hearing it creak. How many nights had she sat down in this very place? He drops his eyes to her desk drawers and feels his chest weigh, his throat become swollen. He has to vacate the room and the clothes will go first. They will be kept as spares for the new female recruits, just in case. Her boots would be recycled, too, for the next set of soldiers. Everything that can be used again, that they had when they first signed up and given permission to take in the case of their deaths, will be taken out and stored for the new set of recruits.

Everything but the items in her desk, her most personal items.

She had not given release of those, but she had once said that they were free to take them if they wanted.

"Why would you say that," Levi thinks aloud, pulling open a drawer blankly. His eyes widen, his body freezes, and he stares down at a stack of letters with pain blossoming in his chest. His name is the first on the stack—_Corporal Levi_—and he is nauseously certain of who the rest of the letters belong to. Levi does not touch it for a moment, staring down at the familiar handwriting, but when he does, he takes the entire stack, putting his letter aside and spreading the others out before him.

"…Erd," he reads the second letter. "Gunther. Hanji. Mike. Auruo….Eren."

He observes them, resting his elbows on the desk, dropping his face in his hands. She had left letters—she left _written letters_ for them, just them, for _him_, and he can hear the way his breath comes out ragged and feel the way his nails dig into his brow, into his bone, and lining his grief is gratefulness. He is so grateful, he is so absolutely relieved, because she did not go with ideals and hopes crushing her in her last moments. She had been conscientious enough to even leave them letters.

She had been bold enough to ignore his words—_the dead can't talk_—and give him another despairing reason to care for her.

Levi takes his letter and tears it open swiftly, taking out the folded pages. There's more pages than he expected and he unfolds them carefully, his eyes landing on the first line:

_Dear Corporal._

He can't breathe.

_If you're reading this, that means I have died on duty._

He swallows and it hurts.

_I'm sorry, Corporal, I know you always say that the dead have nothing to say, but I do. I have a lot to tell you, Levi, and I hope this letter doesn't annoy you too much. First, I'd like to state that I hope my death was not in vain but, rather, helped in the advancement of humankind. That's all I ever wanted, to be strength in the eyes of the recruits like you are._

He grits his teeth but he reads the rest. He reads it all, slowly, methodically, taking in the way she curves the C in his title and the way she loops the L in his name. He doesn't realize his jaw had been clenched until he reaches the end of her letter and it aches. There is a bitter emptiness that swallows him from the inside out, that makes the air around him feel not quite real. He folds the letter back and carefully places it inside its envelop, slipping it into the inner pocket of his jacket.

He collects the rest and and sharply stands, pushing the chair back in its place. He closes her door and its a resounding clank, like iron rather than weak wood. His footfalls are louder in the hall than ever, and he finds Hanji first.

She notices him next. "Did you get her room—ah, what's this…." She stares at the envelop and her lips round, her eyes wide with realization. "This is Petra's writing."

"She left you and Eren a letter."

"And you?"

"The dead shouldn't talk. She knew that."

"But she did it anyway, didn't she?" Hanji looks down at the letter with soft eyes, stroking her thumb over the indents of her name. "She was always clever. She proved you wrong."

"Yes," Corporal Levi confesses and Hanji has to look away. She feels uncomfortable, staring at his hollow eyes, the dead way he looks at her; like he is one of the dead himself, eyes opaque and still. "She always was. Where is Eren?"

"He's out front, tending to the horses with Mikasa—ah, Levi? Are you sure you should give it to him _now?_"

"Now is as best a time as ever. The sooner he can overcome this, the better."

Levi walks past her and, even from down the hall, he can hear Hanji's shaky exhale, but his stride did not falter. He found Eren through Mikasa. You could not miss that woman, not when she wore that scarlet scarf of hers. She sensed him first and the look she fixed him with spoke of caution and warning and he saw the way her hand twitched to her waist, to her blades, as if in anticipation for danger.

She's right to be wary.

He is dangerous.

He's lethal.

"C-Corporal," Eren sputters, standing up straight. "Do you require something?"

"No," he answers, shortly. He holds out a letter and looks him in the eye as he says, "Petra left this for you. We're vacating her room."

Eren expresses what he can't, what he couldn't when he found his own letter, and Levi watches distantly as Eren's face draws in horror and agony and he clutches the letter with both hands. His shoulders shake, his chest heaves, and his eyes shut and tears leak from the edges, his head bowing, his knees shaky. But he will be fine, perfectly fine, because he has Mikasa. He has Armin. He has Jean, he has Connie, he has Sasha, he has Christa, he has Ymir. He has friends, he has people he can rely on and, most importantly, he has no title.

He is no Corporal, no Commander.

He's a soldier.

He's allowed to grieve.

Levi has to endure.

"Clean the topmost floors before tomorrow evening; we're leaving the day after tomorrow." Levi orders crisply. He looks away from Eren's hunched form, refusing to look into Mikasa's accusing eyes. Without another word, he walks away, and he is alone again, only this time he hears nothing, not even how his boots crunch the leaves. He only hears Petra. The ink on the paper comes alive with her sweet voice:

_Corporal, I want you to know that even if the world thinks you are cold and heartless and cruel, I never will._

_I __**never **__have, Levi._

He doesn't remove the letter from his jacket, even when they go on another scout, even when blood splatters his face and arms and chest and neck. He doesn't let anyone touch his jacket again, not even to wash, not even on a whim. The letter remains over his heart, and will remain there, until his own time comes and someone discovers he had only enough heart for Petra Ral.


End file.
